Becoming Someone You Can Bet On

Becoming Someone You Bet On

This is the season finale. And we're ending where everything actually begins. With you.

You can have all the clarity in the world. You can know exactly what you need to do, feel fed up enough to finally do it, hear the compass loud and clear. But if you don't trust yourself to follow through, none of it matters.

Here's what nobody tells you about confidence. It's not something you find. It's not something someone gives you. It doesn't show up one day when the circumstances are finally right.

It's built. One kept promise at a time.

Ash gets personal about her fitness journey and how running three miles for the first time didn't just change what she believed her body could do. It changed how she showed up everywhere else. Because that's how this works. A kept promise leaks into everything.

This one is for anyone who has been betting on everyone else and forgetting to bet on themselves.

Season 2 is coming. But first, go keep a promise to yourself.

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Now What Are We Doing? is for anyone navigating adulthood when life doesn't go exactly as planned. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, wonderful people, and welcome back to the season finale of Now, What Are We Doing? Today's episode is Becoming Someone You Can Count On. And as always, we're going to start this episode with a question. So let me ask you something. Is there someone in your life that you would never let down? Someone who, if they called you and said that they needed you, you would show up. I'm talking 12 a.m., 3 a.m. 5 a.m. No questions, no excuses, no let me see how I feel that day. I'm guessing most of you could think of at least one person. And maybe it's your best friend, your mom, your dad, your sister. Someone you would move mountains for without even thinking twice. Now, let me ask you a harder question. Are you that person for yourself? When you tell yourself that you're going to do something, wake up at a certain time, apply for a job that seems slightly out of your reach, start something you've been putting off, organizing that closet, going to that workout. Do you show up or do you suddenly become a lawyer and negotiate? Do you make excuses? Do you give yourself grace that you would never extend to someone who let you down repeatedly?

Confidence Is Built

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Here's what no one tells you about confidence. It's not something you find, and it's definitely not something you're born with. It's not something that just arrives one day. Confidence is built. One kept promise at a time. And today, in the season finale, I thought it was fitting to talk about someone you can actually count on. Because that is the foundation of everything. Every dream, every leap. It only works if you trust the person placing the bet. And right now, a lot of us don't. We're gonna

Is Confidence Really Quiet?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

change that. I think that a lot of us perceive confidence as a woman who walks into a room and owns it, you know, Naomi Campbell type of vibe. Someone who never second guesses herself. And I've read a lot of memoirs from notable people, especially notable black women and figures over the years. And one thing that I can correlate with just about all of them is there is no one that is 100% confident every single moment and every single risk. Real confidence is much quieter than that. Doesn't announce herself, doesn't need to post every single thing that he or she has, because they don't need to. Confidence that if you put one foot in front of the other, this thing that's called walking is going to come natural to you. It's the same thing with us. We have to really build ourselves and build our confidence in small ways first, then

Making Small Deposits

SPEAKER_00 4:58

in bigger ways. Today, we start making deposits. Every time you do what you said you were going to do, you make a deposit. Every time you don't, you make a withdrawal. And a lot of us are overdrawn. Not because we're weak or lazy or broken, but because we've been breaking promises to ourselves for so long, we've stopped believing in our own word. And today we start making deposits. I want to tell you about a time I decided I was gonna become a runner. Well, I made a goal that I could run a 5k, which is essentially three miles without stopping. And for those of you who don't know, I've always kind of had this thing where I wanted to be able to run more than a mile. I've always wanted to challenge myself in that way, but running has always seemed very naturally hard for me. And I am by no means a natural athlete, but a couple of years ago, I went through a bunch of apps, Nike Run Club, Couch to 5K, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do it. And I don't care what ups and downs I've had about the past, I'm gonna lock in. I have never felt so proud of myself, and I want to be clear that these three miles were not fast. The pace of the miles wasn't important to me. I wanted to finish and I wanted to finish without stopping. I just wanted to do something that genuinely felt out of reach for me and something that my body had never done, and something also that I wasn't sure mentally I could finish. And I just remembered when I finally hit that three-mile mark, it wasn't just physical, it was something deeper than that. And I also remember going into meetings with my head held a little bit higher because I had achieved this goal, which had nothing to do with my work performance and what type of marketer I was, but it really gave me such a sense of self and such a sense of confidence within myself that I felt like I could take on challenges in the workplace that I had never taken on before. Once you prove to yourself that you can do something hard, something you weren't sure that you could finish, you start looking at other things differently. You start thinking, well, I didn't think I could do that either. And I did. One kept promise changed how I saw myself, and that is how this all works.

Broken Promise Cycle - You're Overdrawn

SPEAKER_00 7:43

So now that we've kind of talked about what kept promises do for us, we also have to talk about what broken promises do for us and what that cycle does for us. Let's talk about what's actually happening because I think a lot of us are stuck in a cycle that we haven't named yet. And it goes like this You set a goal, you get really excited about it. You tell yourself, this time, this time is different. You send your friend, your bestie, a 10-minute long voice note explaining everything you're gonna do and how it's gonna be life-changing and impact your life and others. But then something happens between the intention and the follow-through, life gets busy, you get tired, the motivation runs out, and you don't do one thing. And then when you don't do the thing, something subtle but devastating happens, you feel it for a second, that little that little edge, that little bite of disappointment in yourself, and then you move on, you justify it, reschedule it, you tell yourself tomorrow, or my personal favorite, I'll start Monday. But what you don't realize is that your brain is keeping score. Every time you break a promise to yourself, your brain files that away, and over time it starts to build a case, a case that says, You don't follow through, you say things you don't mean, you can't be trusted, and then one day you have a big, juicy dream, a dream that's going to change your life, probably thousands or millions of others. But then your brain says, Why would this time be any different? That is a broken promise cycle, and it's quietly killing your confidence. The good news is that it works exactly the same way in reverse. Every kept promise files away too. Every time you said that you were going to do, your brain updates the case, and eventually it starts

Start Embarrassingly Small

SPEAKER_00 10:09

to say something different. You follow through. I told you that story about me running the 3K. My first thought was let's run a half marathon. That's how my brain works. But a lot of times we go too big too fast, and it's actually hindering us from changing. So I want you to start so small, it almost feels embarrassing. Yeah, I know. If you're like me, you're not gonna want to do this, but I promise you, you have to do it. So, not three miles, one mile. Heck, half a mile. Not a complete career overhaul, one application, not a whole new morning routine, one thing. Wake up when your alarm goes off. Okay, you want to be a 5 a.m. baddie and you want to do all these things before you're nine to five. Start small. Maybe you pull the alarm clock back 30 minutes at a time, week over week, to see if you can just do that. And here's why this works: your brain actually does not care how big the promise is. It doesn't, it only cares whether you kept it. A small kept promise counts just as much as a big one when it comes to building trust with yourself. So let's start small. Keep the promise, you fill the deposit, you do it again, you go a little bigger. That's it. That's the whole system. The three miles that I ran, it didn't start at three miles. It started with me lacing up my shoes and going on days where I felt like I didn't. And trust me, there were a lot of days I felt like I didn't. It started with one mile, then two, and then one day it was three, then one day it was three, and I hit the three mile mark, and I was crying. Not because I was tired, but because oh, I did that. Start where you are, not

Stop Announcing Goals

SPEAKER_00 12:45

where you wish you were. And here is my thing. We have got to stop announcing and start doing. And I feel like a lot of times social media is like the plague concerning this. Stop announcing your goals. I know, I know. Um, accountability is important and community matters, and all of that is true, but there's a version of announcing your goals that's actually robbing you of the motivation to pursue them. Here's actually what true data and research shows. When you tell someone about a goal and they respond positively, when they say, Yes, you got this, go off, girl, or I'm so proud of you for doing this, your brain gets a little hint of satisfaction. The same satisfaction it would get from actually achieving the goal. And sometimes that hit is just enough to take the edge off the hunger, just enough to make the doing feel slightly less urgent. Some things are meant to be built in private, some promises are just between you and God. Nobody else needs to know about them. There is something so powerful about a quiet confidence, is something that I feel like I've been learning, especially as I've leaned into my mid-30s. Do the work in private and let

The Key Is Keeping Promises To Yourself

SPEAKER_00 14:15

God display it in public. The results will announce themselves. What we're really talking about here is gambling, and that's kind of where the title of this episode comes from. When you place a bet, you are making a calculation. You're looking at the odds and deciding, can I take this risk? The best gamblers, they're not just going off of gut feeling, they're going off of a pattern, some type of track record, some type of evidence. Betting on yourself works the same way. When you have a track record of keeping promises to yourself, even small ones, you start to accumulate evidence. And that's really what I want for you, everyone that's listening. Evidence that you follow through, evidence that you do hard things, evidence that when you decide to do something, it gets done. And then when the big moment comes, the leap of faith, the career pivot, the thing that terrifies you, you're not going in blind. You're betting on someone with a track record. Have you ever looked at someone's career trajectory and wondered, how did they make all of those leaps, especially in a short amount of time? I guarantee you, anyone that has made tremendous leaps in their career has a stack of evidence that says they continually keep promises to themselves. That is why the small stuff matters. The 6 a.m. workout, nobody sees the application you sent, even if you weren't sure that you were qualified, the boundary you held even when it was uncomfortable, the creative thing you made, even though it wasn't perfect, all of it is evidence. All of it is building the case that you are someone worth betting on. And when you believe that, like truly, truly

For When You Slip Up

SPEAKER_00 16:18

believe that, the bet stops feeling like a gamble. It starts feeling like the most logical thing in the world. So I think we so we also have to talk about what do you want to so we so we do have to talk about what do you do when you break a promise to yourself, because no one is gonna be perfect 100% of the time, and this part is inevitable, even in your strive to hit the target 100% of the time. You will have days where you don't follow through, where the alarm goes off and you don't get up, where the goal you set gets pushed back again, and where you drop the ball on something you're committed to. And when that happens, actually not regulate your emotions here. The broken promise is actually not a problem, it's a non-issue. The story you tell yourself after the broken promise is actually the problem. If you say, I knew I couldn't do it, I never follow through. This is just who I am. That story is a lie, and it's more damaging than the missed workout or the skip task could ever be. Here's what I want you to do instead. Acknowledge it. Don't excuse it, don't catastrophize it. Just acknowledge. I said I was going to do this and I didn't. That's on me. And then immediately that same day, if possible, do something small to re-establish the promise. Maybe instead of running half a mile, you walk for a quarter mile. You still laced up your shoes, and you still went outside. The faster you can make a deposit without a withdrawal, the less damage the withdrawal does to your overall balance, right? Grace is not the absence of accountability. Grace is getting back up without making the fail your whole identity. So as we close this episode and the season, I want to leave you with something that ties all of this together. We started this season talking about corporate numbness, about the slow erosion of self that happens when you pour everything into something that isn't yours, about what it feels like when you look up one day and realize you've been surviving instead of living. We talked about chaos being a compass, about the discomfort pointing you somewhere, about the fact that being lost means you finally admitted your way of doing things isn't working, and that actually is the beginning and not the end. And we've talked about being fed up, and how the thing keeping you stuck isn't a lack of knowledge or a lack of opportunity, it's a lack of heat, and how the day you finally get truly done is the day things start to move, and now we're here at the foundation of it all. Because here's what I've learned you can have all the clarity in the world about what you need to do, you can be fed up enough to finally make the move, you can hear the compass loud and clear, but if you don't trust yourself to follow through, if you don't have a track record of keeping promises to yourself, the fear will always win. Confidence is the bridge between knowing and doing, and you build it in the same way you build anything worth having slowly, consistently, one day at a time, one kept promise at a time. So here's what I want you to do before the next season starts. Yep, the next season is actually all planned out, and I'm super excited to share it with you. Pick one promise, just one for you overachievers in the front. Something small, something that you can keep this week and keep it. Not for me. Please don't do this for me. Not to post about, but just for you. And then do it again next week in the week after and watch what happens to how you see yourself. This podcast, this whole season, has been keeping this podcast this whole season has been me keeping a promise to myself. A promise I made when I was tired of building everyone else's dream and had nothing of my own to come home to. A promise that said, you have something worth saying. So say it. And I did, and I'm so glad you were here for it. Thank you for listening to season one of Now What Are We Doing? Season two is coming, and I'll just say this it's going to be even more honest, even more real, and Traps is going to be there for some of the fun. So pray for him. I'll see you then, and until next time, keep your promises, especially the ones you make to yourself. The best is yet to come.